Pursuing A College Degree

When going for a degree at an institute of higher learning it is impossible to pinpoint the exact worth and value of the degree. If you base the value solely off of a monetary value, there are many factors you have to take into account: tuition cost, student debt, living expenses, misc. expenses, time, and your project income from your future job (if you are lucky enough to find or get one straight out of college.) This is also not factoring in the possibility of you going on to get a masters or Ph.D. There is also the school of thought that you go to college to become a more cultured and educated person in the arts then you did when you entered the college. The idea is people go to college to learn about the arts and sciences and should be
in theory well-rounded individuals in all areas by the time they graduate. Those that have received their degree should have mastered mathematical and scientific theories, should have command and control their writing, should be classically trained in the art of philosophy, and should have a deep understanding of history and its subtle nuances. And then there are those that go to school strictly to learn the skills necessary for their chosen career path. They do not want to do anything that will deviate from their major. They just want to take the classes that they’ll need in the real world and they do not want to take any unneeded math, science, English, philosophy, or history courses.
For me personally, I believe that I should go to college to learn the skills that are just necessary for my chosen career path. My chosen career path is more complex to pin down since political science covers a wide array of subjects such as law, government, language arts, philosophy, statics, and some economics. I find it pointless to bog down my schedule with courses that seem utterly pointless to me. I have foreign language courses, science courses, minority and culture studies, and arts courses (pottery, ceramics, fictional writing, etc.) Though I do understand how some can be important to my major such as the minority and culture studies courses, others I scratch my head at and wonder why it is a requirement for a political science. Though I do understand the nuances, perspectives, and deeper understanding of knowledge that these courses can bring. I find the redundancy of such courses academically draining and the cause of unneeded stress. Not everyone that enters college has the inclination of becoming a savant out of college or going to college to become a savant. As much as I would love to come out of school a multitalented man of the arts and science, but the fact of the matter is I do not have the patience or drive to become one.
I have an interesting outlook on school as a whole do my past experience I have had.
In High School, I was a star business. I took every business class Crown Point High School had to offer and place in the top five in the state of Indiana in the state of Indiana for the economics and accounting finance team. I came into college ego driven and deadest on becoming the next Wall Street hotshot. After a year in the School of Business and Economics and a major in Accounting and finance I decided that it was not for me. There was just too much math than I was willing to commit to and I do not have a mathematical mind as it is. I like statistical math, but the amount of math that they were requiring me to do was putting me in a full fledge nose dive (also I could not understand a single thing some of my economics professors were saying). After that setback, I decided to do some research and found political science to be compelling and decided to go with that field of study and become a DC lobbyist. So far I have been successful down this path. I am still driven by ego and searching for that pot of gold over the never-ending rainbow. My megalomaniac motives have not changed, but my outlook on the education system have. I believe that it is the job of high schools to create cookie cutter students that are "prepared" for college and it is the job of the college to create cookie cutter students that are "prepared" for the real world. That was my cynical view of the School of Business and Economics at least. My view of my now political science degree I am going for is more optimistic. While the business school you sit in class like a drone taking in information with no interaction with the professor in an unenthusiastic classroom atmosphere. In Political Science and in the rest of my liberal arts class we are encouraged to be engaged with the class. My classes are usually fueled with discussion from multiple viewpoints and the interaction professors actually, makes learning
fun. I do have a very cynical view of college and I believe that I should only be required to do classes that actually pertain to my field of study and future job, but I believe the worth you get out of college is what you make of it. There are some courses that I will take in the future for fun and because I am generally interested in them, while there will be those that are required that I will deeply despise doing because they are uninteresting and have nothing to do with what I want to do. But, I do believe that what you put into your college experience the more you will get out of it and the more worthwhile it will be in the long run. The more clubs you are in, the more people you know, the richer your college experience will be and that is hard to put a price on. I believe your college experience should be worth more than the degree because it is easy to put a price tag on a degree (that's what the tuition is for) what is hard to do is put a price tag on your on what experiences you've had and what those experiences have taught you and what greater impact they've had on you as a person.